


in floods and in waves

by Byacolate



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Pining, also sort of, heart boners, manly men feeling things, or Sniper's Affection Erection, or Spy Does Things During His Last Days on Earth that Aren't Putting Scout Through His Paces, or That Expiration Date Fic, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 07:18:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1889901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a matter of speaking, it's the end of days, so what's he to expect but 69 hours of seclusion somewhere far, far away from Teufort with an unmasked mercenary in the back of his camper. He’s got the petrol, the inclination, and the merc in question. For all intents and purposes, Sniper has allotted that time to soul-searchingly frantic sex and maybe some nearly-unintended deathbed confessions.</p><p>Except that's not how it happens at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in floods and in waves

 

“Yeah, I’ll see you in hell. Or wherever we go when we don't respawn.”

 

Spy narrows his eyes over the cigarette and snaps his case shut.

 

“You did not escape with the rest of the miscreants?” he says archly, taking a slow drag as he looks away. Despite himself, Sniper is endeared. At one point he’d found it impossibly obnoxious, the laughable fondness that crops up behind his ribcage at the most arbitrary moments. Like any of the other number of coping mechanisms he’s had to adopt in his employment, he doesn’t question it anymore. He wouldn’t put it past the drugs. Long exposure to the sun. Bullets to the head.

 

“Don’t tell me you’re pouting because your dramatic little speech went to waste.”

 

When Spy glares, he glares daggers. Normally, the term is as literal as it gets - he likes to be on the nose about it, really, thinks he's clever - but in this case nothing shiny and lethal has made its way into his softer bits, so he figures he’s in the clear.

 

“Did you stick around to insult me?” Spy sneers, shoving the silver case in his pocket and turning away toward the door. "Even if I had more than seventy hours to live, I would not have time for this.”

 

“So are you gonna waste it in a strop, or do you want to make better use of it with some good company?”

 

“There is no such thing in this base,” Spy snorts, but he does stop at the door and doesn’t start again until Sniper has a hand at the small of his back.

 

In a matter of speaking, it's the end of days, so what's he to expect but 69 hours of seclusion somewhere far, far away from Teufort with an unmasked mercenary in the back of his camper. It's what he intends; he’s got the petrol, the inclination, and the merc in question. For all intents and purposes, Sniper has allotted that time to soul-searchingly frantic sex and maybe some nearly-unintended deathbed confessions.

 

Except that's not how it happens at all. They last a day, if that, before Spy wants to go back.

 

(" _Want_ is a very strong word, and one I would disagree with entirely." He’d been stretched out on the top of the camper, gazing out at the unending desert sky and its deep blue, smattered with stars. Sniper had nearly pushed him off the roof just to keep himself from thinking pointless things like how attractive the curve of Spy’s nose was and how dignified the grey at his temples and just how hard would he have to fuck Spy out of his mind so that he’d say something profound about what they were first so that Sniper wouldn’t have to. “I have a feeling…”

 

“Go with your gut, then. It’s a sound instinct, mate - ‘specially when it’s telling you to head back to a camp stuffed with the dying blokes you can barely stand half the time.” He’d stolen the cigarette from Spy’s mouth and took a drag. “Y’might want to start out now - it’s a long walk back.”

 

Spy had pushed _him_ off the side of the camper then. Cursing. Laughing.)

 

He feels they should return, so they return. Sniper tells himself that if Spy hadn’t ever so pointedly reminded him that there was no particularly Australian dying wish in the bucket and really had it been so difficult to help keep Spy from looking the fool for _caring_ , he really would’ve let Spy find his own way back. He settles for arguing half-heartedly that his dying wish wasn’t something to be read in front of their cozy little group. Spy’s face is so remarkably unimpressed that Sniper can all but taste his scorn.

 

 

* * *

 

“I did not know you could play the saxophone.”

 

Indulging Spy - Scout - half the bloody base - had not been how he’d seen himself spending his last days on Earth, but he’d done a great many things the past few years than he might not have previously intended on account of his team, and he imagined that if they had longer than two days to live, he would have done many more.

 

“I didn’t know you had a soft spot for that kid a mile wide,” he says instead of anything so incriminating. Spy settles him with a particularly woeful look.

 

“ _Mon cher_ , your brains have been utterly _riddled_ by my counterpart’s bullets, and it shows,” he says mournfully, and Sniper is taken aback by how easily Spy’s touch to his jaw comes. They’ve never been given to public displays of anything but compulsory camaraderie, and this is downright affectionate. "Had we more time, I would have liked for you to play for me." 

 

 

"There's still time," Sniper grumbles, curling his fingers around Spy's wrist. "When you get a minute from teachin' a doomed kid how to woo out of his league, come find me." Since they're all out in the open, and he's probably entitled to at least a little recklessness after Spy's demand for seduction rang out through the halls earlier that afternoon, Sniper turns his head and kisses the palm of Spy's hand. It's covered in leather, but he does not doubt Spy can feel its warmth. "Maybe I'll even let you make a special request."

 

 

"Anything I want?" Spy asks, the curl of his lips coy. Sniper smirks back.

 

 

"We have the resources, the will," he says slowly, "to make these hours count," and for a moment Spy just stares at him before shoving him away, pointedly ignoring Sniper's laughter.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_"No, I will not leave well enough alone, if you can memorize my speech, you should have put a wish in the bucket!"_

 

"Y'know, when you're really indignant, your accent gets too thick to understand. I'm not sure even half of that was English. But y'know what transcends language?"

 

"Silence?"

 

"Music. Sex. Take your pick. Unless you'd rather have the Eiffel Tower?"

 

"Won't you please hand me your rifle and drive approximately five miles into the desert, _cher_?"

 

"Music it is, then."

 

 

* * *

 

 

They share a mutual appreciation for professionalism, which had been a high point of attraction for Sniper. Another one would be their mutual appreciation for good liquor and cock, and when Spy isn't having a grand old time putting Scout through his romantic paces, they indulge in both.

 

"Seduce me," Sniper says, leaning against the door frame and tipping his hat back just enough to draw attention to the motion. Spy has a thing for his hat; calls it charmingly archetypal on his good days, and makes demands to leave it on (accompanied by little else, naturally) on even better nights. Spy has a thing for several of Sniper's pointless little nuances - the way he sounds just after sleep, the girth of his forearms, the little curls at the nape of his neck. For himself, Sniper has his own list of Spy's traits that do ludicrous things to the chemicals in his brain, and one of them is that particular scowl on Spy's face when he's reminded of his theatrics. (Sniper's embarrassingly fond of those too.)

 

"You are not as amusing as you think you are."

 

" _Seduce me_."

 

"My god, you're _not_ trying to mimic my accent."

 

Sniper pushes away from the door and tilts his head just enough that he knows Spy can see his eyes through the lens. He may not be as skilled in the art of seduction as the masked mercenary seated before him, tumbler of scotch resting forgotten in his hand, but he does know what gets Spy interested. Just the little things, like the cock of his hip and the tilt of his smile and a brief flash of teeth. He knows what piques Spy's attention, and he's not above using it to his advantage.

 

"Seduce me," he says again, pitching his voice at an octave of private, wicked suggestion and before he can so much as blink, he's being shoved against the wall.

 

* * *

 

 

Before the others inevitably arrive to watch Scout fail himself into an even earlier grave, Sniper stands behind Spy's control chair, leaning over his head as they watch the kid desperately attempt to turn the break room into a primary school dance hall. It's ridiculous, they both agree, and gaudy, but he's so earnest that Sniper can't help but sympathize with Spy's secret desire for him to succeed.

 

"We've never been on a proper date," he says instead of pointing out how invested Spy is in Scout's potential one night of a love life. Spy snorts, never once taking his eyes from the screen.

 

"Of course not," he says, and for a brief, uncomfortable moment, Sniper's jaw tenses and his fists clench. He's not a fool or a teenager, he never expected much, but even so... "There is no place to share a proper date in a hundred mile radius. Unless you would prefer a refined meal of fried chicken and an unforgettable night spent in a third-rate hotel."

 

"I guess we did drive out in the desert that once to watch the eclipse," Sniper says, his entire body going slightly limp with relief. Maybe he is a fool.

 

"That hardly counts," Spy frowns, craning his neck back to look up at him. "We were not alone, if you remember."

 

"Not until Pyro ran into the desert," Sniper agrees, reaching down to cup Spy's jaw. They only have hours to live. He strokes a thumb over Spy's lower lip. "But then I'd maybe call it something like a date."

 

"You would not dare set the bar so low with me."

 

They have but a scant few hours, and Sniper wants very badly to see if maybe two can fit in the chair if one sits astride the other. But then Demoman's voice is carrying down the hall closer and closer to the control room, accompanied by Soldier's, and Sniper reluctantly pulls his hand away.

 

* * *

 

 

He's shooting Scout free from a giant, writhing tentacle bread monster and cursing Spy's gut feeling to hell or wherever they end up in the next half hour. Or earlier, depending on said bread monster's appetite. Of all the ways he'd imagined spending his last half hour on Earth, he could say with utmost sincerity that this particular scenario had never crossed his mind.

 

When he sees Spy join the fray, the bastard actually looks _pleased_ , and Sniper would wring his neck if they hadn't had slightly larger problems to worry about. One slightly larger problem.

 

A slightly larger problem that wins a game of tug-of-war with Sniper for his rifle.

 

Maybe he'll wring Spy's neck after all.

 

* * *

 

 

They're not going to die a terrible tumor-ridden death, and he figures it's alright that he found out so late considering there was at least one other idiot on base who had no idea. His death watch goes off anyway as he's sitting atop the felled bread beast cleaning his kukri. He very calmly unbuckles it from his wrist and chucks it hard in no particular direction. If it glances off Spy's shoulder, well. Clearly he wasn't _aiming_.

 

"You didn't tell me we weren't dying," he says when Spy finds him later that night on the top of his camper with a pilfered six pack. Spy settles next to him and shoves the beer away like it's a personal affront to his presence.

 

"You didn't tell me you wanted a proper date."

 

"Fair enough," Sniper says, and manages to soak his tone in enough sarcasm that Spy actually laughs.

 

"We're not going to die," he says cheerfully, moving until he's straddling Sniper's stomach and brushing the hat away from his brow to kiss him. Sniper was never really upset, so it's not a challenge to give up the ghost and slide his hands up underneath Spy's impeccable suit. "And you want a proper date."

 

"If you sit here repeatin' facts all night, I'm gonna worry _my_ counterpart's done a bit too much bullet riddlin' here," he says, cupping the back of Spy's head and knocking their foreheads together. Spy laughs and kisses him again.

 

"I can arrange something for us, what with all this free time we have to live," he says sounding utterly pleased, content in the blood that still flows in their veins, and something else. Maybe, if Sniper dares to hope, maybe he's just a little bit pleased that Sniper wants the wining and the dining and the proper romance of it all. Because he does - he wants all of that. He wants it nearly as much as he just wants Spy to keep kissing him. "But if you dare allow even the mention of fried chicken to ever cross your lips, we are through. Wipe that smirk off of your face, I am entirely serious."

 

They're not dying, and Spy is of a mind to be romanced in a fashion that isn't just Sniper grumbling sugary nonsense into his sweat-sticky collar bone in the dead of night. This is _exactly_ how Sniper would have liked to spend his last day on Earth.

 

"A'right, love. I'll be sure to keep that in mind."

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Streetlights' by Ludo: _And now the secrets carefully kept inside, run the streets red our chemicals spread, washing us through, making you mine / I come alive as the shadows parade / My hot summer blood comes in floods and in waves_
> 
> If you are so inclined, feel free to follow [my Tumblr](http://byacolate.tumblr.com/).


End file.
